Style Your Podio Webforms to Match the Look of Your Website

What good is your best webform if it’s not connected to your workflow? To date, more than 150,000 workflows have been started by a Podio webform. That means around 150,000 sales leads, feedback submissions, new hires and info requests have come through a Podio webform before being managed in a Podio App in a Podio Workspace.

But importantly, what good is a webform if it doesn’t cleverly blend with your uniquely designed website? That’s a question we’ve been hearing more and more recently, and today we have an answer. You can now style your webforms to fit the design of any website!

We believe you can fly, we believe you can customize

If you’ve never created a webform on Podio, check out this tutorial video to see how it’s done in three minutes! As for getting started with adding custom styling – it’s so easy even this guy (we think) can do it. When configuring your webform, click Theme and Use custom CSS. Then, import your CSS properties and you’re good to go. For a little inspiration, check out how Oval Business Solutions, the winners of our recent Webform Beauty Contest created this great design for UK-based start-up, Field Lover.

Oval Business Solutions set up this Podio webform for Field Lovers’ users to submit site issues and feedback. It feds directly to the web development team's workspace, so they can act immediately as any issues came up.

Oval Business Solutions offers a mix of expertise in web development, collaboration technology and business support services for companies of all sizes, including its very own offshoot, Field Lover, a new startup that helps anyone find outdoor fields to rent, from horticulturists to horse-owners, event organisers to kite flyers.

Adrian Griffith, Oval Business Solutions

Oval’s CEO, Adrian Griffith explains, they got to work on the Field Lovers’ website a few months ago, using Podio to manage the project and collaborate on design, web development and marketing initiatives. Oval built their very own apps for the Field Lovers project, using the Podio App Builder, to handle the product backlog (feature list), bugs, enhancements, development sprints, feedback and documentation.

To gather feedback from Field Lovers’ precious early adopters, Podio webforms were used from the very beginning of the website’s launch. Using Podio webforms, Oval was able to collect contact details of Field Lovers’ pre-beta users, by enabling people to register interest in the service. Each completed form instantly dropped into a Podio CRM app so the team could start to build a mailing list.

Field Lovers also added an automated task to their CRM app, prompting a team member to follow up on each new registration in case any queries needed a quick response. Later, the same app was used to collect general feedback from people interested in learning more about Field Lovers.

Oval’s Field Lover project (still ramping up) has been an excellent study in how Podio can be used to pull together all the processes involved in building a new web startup. The Oval team, based in locations all over the world, has been able to work seamlessly on Podio without having rely on email, while creating the apps they need to work the way they want to.

Metonymy Media: Behind every great story, there’s a great webform

Today, we’re also bringing you an inspiring webform tale from Metonymy Media, a talented bunch of writers based in Indianapolis that specialize in creating content for websites, blogs, press releases, and print materials.

Ryan Brock, Metonymy Media

As Metonymy Media’s CEO, Ryan Brock explains, their most powerful webform, aptly named the “Fastball App” came about as a way for the Metonymy team to more efficiently collaborate with their clients on story ideas, blog post themes and other creative content pursuits.

Clients with different content needs submit their requests quickly and on-the-fly using Fastball, reducing the need for meetings, team briefings and lengthy discussions and leaving more time for the Metonym team to do what they do best – write.

Right away Ryan receives a notification on Podio or a push notification from the Podio iPhone App and he can assign the blog pitch to a writer who can start work immediately. With clients all over the U.S., Podio webforms have made it easier for Metonymy to meet the needs of its growing customer base.

Recently Ryan sent us a video showing how Metonymy collaborate on Podio and how his Fastball App works, check it out:

he guys, we´re using podio here to organzie our workflow, and i have to say: I really start to like it. good job so far, keep working, congratulations :)

http://Respectmyregion.com/ Respect My Region

Great stuff, thanks for the great work! Keep it up, new additions are always welcome and needed! #Props!

http://twitter.com/344kellogg Russell Tanner

This is great. Good news. What’s going to make Podio really stand out (more than it already is) is adding dependency fields / various paths. For example, having fields like “Do you want us to contact you?” with Yes or No options. And then if someone selects Yes, they will then see different fields than if they had selected No. That kind of functionality (which is common in platforms like Formstack and Wufoo) would really set Podio apart.

http://www.facebook.com/lilly.hanscom Lilly Hanscom

Great feedback Russell. Stay tuned :)

http://twitter.com/jvduf Jeroen van Duffelen

So I’ve been using the forms for several landing pages and I am happy with the functionality but I’ve found that loading takes some time… Some of my users got confused because they got a blank page for a while and they didn’t submit the form but used the back button. I like Podio forms because it integrates with the workflow. But if it comes to speed I might have to choose for Google Forms…

http://twitter.com/friendsoftouch Friends of TOUCH

Excited to see this – we are a small non-profit and we get a lot of form spam. We recently used one of the guest blog submission apps to have a missions team report from the field – it worked great, allowing both our US and Uganda staff to give articles “thumbs up” before publication. Our next project is to replace our child sponsorship form with a Podio form and have it trigger a quick follow-up from the team – with no more spa-am.
@friendsoftouch

http://ajwconsultingmedia.com/ Adrienne Williams

I can’t even do this at all. Something is wrong with my account. I don’t have forms, links, or urls… no form window pops up. :-(

http://twitter.com/ayroessler Adrian Y Roessler

Adrienne, have you already created a workspace? Then click on “Add App” and build your app/webform using the drag’n’drop app builder. Hit save and it will ask you to turn the webform on. Alternatively, you can also click on the wrench icon when you’re looking at the app, and select webform. Look here: https://help.podio.com/entries/21684758-creating-a-webform-from-an-app

Andjel Boskovic

This is also something that I was thinking about! Keep the good work!

http://ajwconsultingmedia.com/ Adrienne Williams

Thanks all I got support.. my page was a bit different. We found the wrench. wink.

http://twitter.com/doefiets DoeFiets

I would like to use this on my website, but I need to know the url of the page that the visitor was on while filling out the embedded Podio form. Is there any way of doing this?